Untitled Haunting by Statues [Poem]

[bodyetal]

one of crow&’s “fugue poems” (AKA poems that fey feels suddenly compelled to write and knocks out immediately), on an aspect of our plurality we haven’t decided whether to explain otherwise. partial free verse/elegy, if you’re nerdy about that kind of thing.

if you stand very still
(inside yourself, your body does not matter except—)
you will feel them waiting there
(—for what it holds, for it holds all of them)

they are standing still too
(you think they are waiting, they are so still—)
like silent trees, in half a ring
(—but they are not, they do not need patience)

if you would just sit down
(you forgot they were there but you still knew—)
and let yourselves stop and think
(—you just didn’t pay much attention)

maybe they would tell you
(maybe they wouldn’t, you will never have—)
what it is that brings them back
(—the patience, the time, the care, the nothing)

they don’t have souls for it
(does a tree, does a forest, does anything—)
but they only haunt themselves
(—really? what makes one up, is it a mind?)

they do not suffer now
(you are not afraid of them, but you are—)
maybe they never did
(—afraid of your own procrastination, why have you waited?)